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Social Blog Series: Social Media eCommerce - The future is now

Social Media eCommerce: The Future is Now

Now that the dust has settled after Facebook’s F8 conference where the Messenger App, The Internet of Things and 360-degree videos were king, it’s time to explore Social Media eCommerce.

In the end of 2014 Facebook launched multi-product ads: a brand new format with several images and descriptions containing unique destination links.

We had already seen something similar when uploading multiple pictures with a Facebook or Twitter post; however for the first time ever we are now able to segment our audiences based on their multiple interactions with a single ad.

In a previous article, we explored some of the targeting options available within Facebook for Advertisers, which have evolved and improved since then, making Facebook an appealing eCommerce platform with the most accurate targeting available to digital marketers in 2015.

According to a Dentsu Aegis Network Ireland research, we have found that with most of iProspect, Carat, Vizeum and Isobar’s clients there was a significant drop in overall costs due to an average conversion rate of 2%, representing a performance increase of 70 to 100%.

Considering people are not actively looking for a specific product or service on a search engine these are ground breaking results, especially when we put all the pieces of the puzzle together with the recent focus on Mobile Payments through Facebook Messenger and the introduction of Dynamic Retargeting using a brand’s product catalogues.

Even brands with a single product or service can take advantage of this new feature in a very creative way. Because this is a new format, we have the novelty factor working in our favour, with engagement rates being catapulted by the clever and creative way the ads can be created, as seen below.

How do I better take advantage of multi-product ads for my brand?

Imagine you want to showcase five completely different product ranges but you don’t want your ads competing against each other in the newsfeed auction or the overlapping of targeted audiences. All these issues are solved now.

We have five different product ranges in the same ad placement which means even if someone isn’t interested in Product A there is still a chance they will click on Product B, C, D or E, which increases the chances of higher engagement rates (as all interactions come under one single ad instead of five different ones), translating in lower prices and a wider reach. So basically, you get five for the price of one.

On a second stage, considering website tracking is in place, a second multi-product ad can be created, this time containing different product variations within a range of product, increasing the chances users will click-through on a product image now familiar to them, shortening the path to conversion.

To recap, with multi-product ads there is a high chance the click to the website objective will be (at least) 30% cheaper widening your reach almost to a native video level (the video format has the widest reach and lowest prices among all the currently available formats) with amazing engagement and conversion rates, making retargeting more effective and cost-efficient.

For advanced users Facebook is now testing Dynamic Retargeting Ad creation where the website is tagged and a product catalogue is generated, allowing advertisers to automate this whole process, further increasing the impact of Social Media ads for eCommerce and online sales.

We'll be talking a lot about social, ecmmerce, and what's coming in the world of social over the course of this week, but if you want to learn more about what we do at iProspect, don't hesitate to get in touch.